Chapter 2: Quiet Calculations and Crooked Smiles
The morning sun in the village was deceptively gentle. Golden rays spilled across cracked tiles and crooked fences like a lover's touch, warming a world too cold for second chances.
Shen Ci stood at the gate of her childhood home, arms crossed, dressed in a faded linen shirt and patched pants. She looked like any other villager's daughter—forgotten, unremarkable.
But inside?
Inside, she was a goddamn phoenix gearing up to torch the ruins of her past.
The air smelled of dried hay, livestock, and last night's coal fire. It was oddly grounding. Shen Ci adjusted the cloth satchel on her shoulder, tucking her bank passbook and a notebook inside. Time to make her first quiet moves.
The system pinged gently in the back of her mind. No intrusive voices, no floating screens—just subtle nudges like intuition turned up to eleven.
"Nearest currency exchange is in town. Suggested route: South Trail. Estimated travel time: 52 minutes."
She took the trail alone. No one in the village remembered her much; the few who did probably assumed she was just another failed city girl crawling back home.
Let them think that.
The fewer people watching, the better.
---
The town hadn't changed much. Same cobbled streets, same sun-bleached storefronts with names half-erased by weather and neglect. But the currency signs told a different story now.
1 USD = 100 Yuan.
It was surreal seeing it plastered in public. Her brain knew it was real, but her soul still flinched at the math. Her hundred thousand dollars wasn't just savings anymore.
It was power.
She kept her eyes low and her pace steady as she entered the modest little exchange booth tucked between a hardware store and a noodle shop. A bald man in a sleeveless vest looked up with bored eyes.
"Changing money?" he grunted.
Shen Ci slid over a hundred-dollar bill without a word.
The man raised an eyebrow but didn't question it. Moments later, she walked out with a fat envelope of crisp yuan.
Ten thousand yuan. Just a drop. Just a whisper of what she had.
But enough to set the first wheel in motion.
---
By noon, she'd bought basic supplies—a tiller, two sacks of organic fertilizer, and a starter seed batch the system had recommended: purple perilla, high-demand, fast-growing, and rare in this region.
The old shopkeeper tried to convince her to buy something simpler—cabbage or leeks—but she smiled politely and shook her head.
Perilla was the play. Low cost, high yield, and marketable to both herbal shops and restaurants. The system even highlighted a logistics hub fifty kilometers out that paid three times the village price.
"Crazy girl," the shopkeeper muttered under his breath. "Waste of good land on weeds."
Shen Ci just thanked him sweetly and handed over the cash.
She'd let the harvest do the talking.
---
Back home, she got to work. Dirt caked her palms, her sleeves rolled to the elbow as she cleared weeds, churned soil, and set the beds. Her mother's garden hadn't bloomed in nearly a decade, but the soil still remembered her touch.
Kneeling there, sweat clinging to her neck, Shen Ci felt… peace.
Not the kind you find in yoga studios and overpriced therapy.
The kind that grows slowly, painfully, out of hard ground and harder memories.
---
That night, after washing off the dirt and rubbing a sore spot on her shoulder, she opened the notebook in her drawer. She flipped past a rough budget to the page marked:
Phase One: Asset Inventory.
The system had helped sketch out everything she currently owned:
The two-room stone house.
One acre of fertile backyard land.
A shed (unstable but salvageable).
A locked chest in the attic (possibly left by her father—needs investigating).
Three stocks she had vaguely remembered crashing in 2020… but now were due for revival.
Shen Ci circled the chest with a red pen.
She climbed to the attic with a flashlight and a crowbar.
The trunk was buried beneath old quilts and a broken fan. It groaned open with a sigh like it hadn't breathed in years.
Inside: yellowed documents. Her father's worker's ID. A cracked family photo.
And a rusted metal box labeled in her mother's neat handwriting: "For when the world no longer makes sense."
She opened it.
Inside were old bank notes. Pre-reform USD. Not usable anymore—but tucked beneath them was something else.
Land certificates.
Her parents had bought another plot—three acres—on the edge of the forest, untouched, forgotten. Worth nothing back then.
But now?
With the mineral trend map the system had downloaded into her mind?
That land was sitting on a vein of rare earth metals.
Shen Ci sat back, stunned.
Her parents had tried to leave her something. They'd trusted the land when the world betrayed them.
She pressed the certificates to her chest and closed her eyes.
"I won't waste it," she whispered. "I swear."
---
The next day, she went to the village committee office. The place hadn't changed. The same squeaky fan in the corner. The same lazy clerk with tea stains on his shirt.
"I want to register a reclamation notice," she said calmly.
The clerk looked up, mildly surprised. "You? The Shen girl?"
She nodded.
"You planning to farm or flip it?"
"I'm planning to grow," she said.
He shrugged. "Suit yourself. No one's touched that land in years. Probably cursed."
She smiled, signed the papers, and walked out with a stamped approval.
---
At sunset, a knock echoed on her front gate.
She opened it to find a familiar face: Shen Li, her cousin. Same smug curve to her lips, same artificial sweetness in her voice.
"CiCi! I heard you were back! Why didn't you come say hi?" Shen Li said, all innocence and gloss.
Behind her stood Zhao Feng, Shen Ci's ex-fiancé. Arms crossed, lips pressed tight.
Well, well.
The snakes had slithered in early.
"I've been busy," Shen Ci said flatly.
Shen Li leaned in, lowering her voice. "Listen… I know things were weird when you left. But now that you're back, why don't we clear the air?"
"You mean, like you cleared my bank account?" Shen Ci replied, voice sugar-sweet.
Shen Li froze.
Zhao Feng stiffened.
"I forgave you," Shen Ci said, stepping closer, "but I didn't forget. And I never lose twice."
She shut the gate gently.
Behind it, she heard Shen Li mutter, "What the hell's gotten into her?"
And Zhao Feng, quieter: "She's not the same."
You're damn right, she wasn't.
---
Back inside, Shen Ci poured herself a glass of cold water and stared out at the moonlit field.
Tomorrow, she'd start planting.
In a month, the perilla would be ready.
In three, she'd start investing again.
And in six?
This village would start whispering her name with something new in their voices:
Respect.
Or fear.
Maybe both.
She took a sip, smiled faintly, and whispered to the empty room:
"Let them come."
---
End of Chapter 2